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CompUSA’s Nathan Morton Passes

Morton, who built the business from a two-store operation into a national multi-billion-dollar specialty chain, has died, according to published reports.

CompUSA was founded here in 1984 as Soft Warehouse, a direct-to-business reseller, and opened its first retail store in 1985. The company changed its name to CompUSA in 1991, and gained critical mass through its acquisition of Computer City from Tandy, now RadioShack, in 1998. The company was taken private in a March 2000 acquisition by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu and his Mexico City-based company Grupo Carso.